Deric Bownds
These articles, from Deric's MindBlog at http://mindblog.dericbownds.net report new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
MY BLOGS
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Deric Bownds' MindBlog
http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/
This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 2494 )
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Inventing New Words - Iconic Sounds Are Used.
Perlman and collaborators find that students inventing new words use certain types of vocalizations with certain words. For example, made-up words for "up"... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Thinking Too Much - Self Generated Thought as the Engine of Neuroticism.
Perkins et al. offer an opinion piece in which they propose that the cost and benefits of neuroticism are surface manifestations of a tendency to engage in... Read more
Posted on 11 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Savoring Happy Memories - Value Representations in the Striatum
Speer et al. observe responses in the corticostriatal circuits that respond to monetary reward when positive autobiographical memories are recalled. These... Read more
Posted on 10 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
A Classification of Cognitive Mechanisms in Meditation Practice.
Dahl, Lutz, and Davidson offer an interesting classification system for different styles of meditation. Here is a paste up from their abstract and... Read more
Posted on 08 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Bioethics - Doing More Harm Than Good?
Steven Pinker recently ignited a small firestorm with his piece in the Boston Globe arguing that bioethical issues that slow down research have a massive human... Read more
Posted on 04 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Oxytocin - More Sophisticated Views of Its Functions
Helen Shen offers a review of studies on oxytocin, the "hug hormone," which influences maternal behavior and social attachment in various species. She notes... Read more
Posted on 03 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Birth of the Moralizing Gods.
Lizzie Wade offers two interesting summaries of work on the evolution of religion that suggest that as societies grew bigger, so did their gods. She describes... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
The Benefits of Reading to Children.
Two items...First, from Montag et al.: Young children learn language from the speech they hear. Previous work suggests that greater statistical diversity of... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Self-policing by Psychologists - Many Prominent Experiments Fail Replication...
Benedict Carey offers context, summary, and reactions to the recent Science article reporting work of a consortium of 270 scientists on five continents led by... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Stress Can Cause Bad Food Choices and Compromise Long Term Goals.
Maier et al. show that more immediate rewards are likely to be chosen following stress because stress increases immediate reward signaling in the amygdala and... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Biased Internet Search Engines Might Influence Election Outcomes
Just in case you are not pessimistic enough already about election manipulations that insure our continued governance by the 1% for the 1% , here is more... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Unequal, but Happy
I just came across an article in my queue of potential posts by Steven Quantz and Anette Asp that I had put aside, thinking to check whether this was the same... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
People Who Eat Spicy Food Live Longer.
I pass on this interesting bit of information because I, like my father and grandfather, am addicted to hot sauce containing chili peppers (use it with every... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Tracking Ongoing Cognition with fMRI of Functional Connectivity States.
This work by Gonzalez-Castillo at al. shows how close we are getting to real time monitoring of brain activity associated with different kinds of tasks (in... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Exercise for the Aging Brain - How Much is Necessary?
Gretchen Reynolds points to interesting work on exercise and the aging brain by Vidoni et. al. Increasing amounts of aerobic exercise (75, 150, 225 minutes per... Read more
Posted on 14 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Knowing the Internal States of Ourselves and of Others.
We frequently can infer the emotional state of someone from the style of their movement, distinguishing, for example, when they hand us something rudely versus... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Overclaiming - the Illusion of Knowledge
Atir et al. probe how our inflated perception of our expertise can lead us to make claims of impossible knowledge. Their edited abstract: People overestimate... Read more
Posted on 11 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Are Chatbots Destined to Become Our Most Sympathetic Listeners?
Markoff and Mozur do a fascinating piece in the NYTimes describing how millions of young Chinese use a smartphone program as their intimate companion. Xiaoice... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Benefits of High School Music Training.
Maybe my avoiding gym glasses in high school by being in the marching band and chorus paid off some brain benefits (in addition to my already being a pianist).... Read more
Posted on 06 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE -
Synchronizing Brain Theta Oscillations Strengthens Our Adaptive Behavior Control.
Reinhart et al. show that synchronizing low-frequency theta (4-8 Hz) EEG oscillations over the medial-frontal cortex with noninvasive direct current electrical... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2015 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE